The present invention relates to dental flossing devices, and particularly to powered devices which include a drive for reciprocating or oscillating the dental floss.
Because of the difficulty and awkwardness of manually flossing teeth, a number of power flossing devices have been developed for reciprocating or oscillating the dental floss between the user's teeth. Examples of known power devices are described in our prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,033,150, as well as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,605,025, 4,458,702, 4,338,957, 4,307,740, 4,235,253 and 3,759,274. Generally speaking, the known devices reciprocate the dental floss either parallel to the axis of the dental floss, and/or perpendicular to the axis of the dental floss. However, it has been found that such flossing devices not only do not remove the deposits of dental plaque from between the teeth in the most effective manner, but also may damage the soft gingival tissue by the "saw-like" motion when reciprocated parallel to the dental floss axes.